App - seldom has such a small word had such a big impact. It's always on the lips of tech's biggest and brightest firms: Apple, Microsoft, Google and BlackBerry. Smartphones, tablets, TVs, fridges, cars: if your devices don't already sport the ability to run small, slick, one-trick programs, then the option is only an upgrade away. The term has become so ubiquitous that the American Dialect Society - a learned group dedicated to the study of the English Language in America - dubbed 'app' its 2010 Word of the Year. In case you're interested, it fended off stiff competition from the Cookie Monster's 'nom'. Praise indeed. But what exactly is an app? Is 'app' really nothing more than a slightly irritating, cutesy term for 'application', or are apps indeed distinct from the software we PC users have enjoyed since the days of DOS?
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